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A North Carolina air traffic controller and his roommate were arrested Friday after authorities discovered a weapon of mass destruction in their apartment.

Charlotte police officers were responding last week to a 911 call regarding a homemade explosive when they found a pipe bomb in the residence of Paul George Dandan, 30, and Derrick Fells, 39. The two men were then taken into custody.

Fells was charged with three counts of manufacturing a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Dandan has been charged with possession of and transporting a weapon of mass destruction, local NBC affiliate WCNC reported Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration told WBTV in a statement that Dandan "only had access to the offsite Air Traffic Control Tower and had no access to the restricted areas of the terminal or ramp. He did not have access to any aircraft at the Airport." The statement added that the administration had "terminated [Dandan's] access to the facility and is investigating."

The FBI was involved in the investigation, but told local media it did not believe at this time that federal charges would be filed against Dandan. He's currently being held under a $45,000 bond in held in the Mecklenburg County Jail.

Dandan was previously arrested in Charlotte for misdemeanor assault involving a female in March 2015 and for domestic battery by strangulation in Dayton Beach, Florida in January 2010, according to records surfaced by Heavy.

The FBI says Bernandino Bolatete bought an illegal silencer for his AR-15 that he planned before committing ‘suicide by cops.’

by KELLY WEILL & EMILIE PLESSET - 12.04.17
Bernandino Bolatete

The FBI said Monday it arrested a man in Jacksonville, Florida who was planning a mass shooting at a mosque. Bernandino Bolatete has been charged with illegally receiving and possessing an unregistered silencer.

Law enforcement said they began investigating Bolatete last week after a concerned citizen reported to police that he had expressed hatred for Muslims and threatened to “shoot up” a mosque, according to a criminal complaint. Police said at a press conference Monday that Bolatete had five rifles, including at least one AR-15. On Facebook, Bolatete posted a fake article accusing Muslims of raping a woman and forcing her to recite the Quran.

Bolatete told an undercover officer that he planned to climb up the tower of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida and open fire on its congregants.

“So we’ll try… we will try a Christian doing uh terroristic act this time to the Muslims,” he told the officer, according to the complaint. “They doing it all the time.”

He told the officer he was willing to die during attack, calling it “suicide by cops.”

Bolatete told the officer he already had a suppressor that wasn’t very “quiet” and that he was looking to buy a new silencer for his rifle because he “might need it,” but did not want to leave a paper trail. Bolatete was quoted as saying he wanted to attach it to his “pistolized AR,” which was also unregistered.

“Altho the suppressor is not really that ‘quiet’ but it can be used on the 4th of July or New Year time, it can easily blend with the sound of fireworks,” he texted the officer. “I think that's the right time you can hit that asshole that you have there.”

Bolatete told the officer he was concerned about an upcoming doctor appointment for his kidney, which was only 31 percent functioning. Bolatete said he lost his other kidney years ago when he was accidentally shot in the back at a shooting range in the Philippines.

On Facebook, Bolatete called himself a “shooting sport enthusiast” and posted photos of himself holding semi-automatic weapons. He also shared an anti-Muslim article entitled: “EVIL: Radical Muslims Rape, Make Woman Quote Quran, But How They ‘Finish Her Off’ Is the Worst.” The story was aggregated from “Red Flag News,” a right wing website accused of publishing debunked or dubious articles.

A man has been jailed for over two years after he went round a London area looking for Muslims so that he could stab them. Mickey Sage, 24, armed himself with a 10-ins knife and went round Camberwell Green where he threatened people in the early hours of June 7.

Police were first called to Camberwell Green Court after threatening people at 1.43am.

Less than 10 minutes later they were called again to Camberwell Green junction with Camberwell Church Street after reports of a man pulling a knife on people and asking if they were Muslim.

While being taken into police custody he told an officer ‘it was my knife and I was out to kill a Muslim’.

He then made a number of Islamophobic comments and once at the police station he admitted that he was out to find a Muslim to stab them.

He said that he ‘would be a martyr for England and stab an imam in the neck.’

Sage pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening a person with a knife an a public place, accepting the incident was religiously aggravated.

He was jailed for two years and three months at Inner London Crown Court.

DC Samuel Cafferty from Southwark CID said: ‘Sage set out with a large knife with the clear intention to find Muslims to stab. Hate crime like this has no place in any society.

‘Sage poses a very clear and present danger to members of the public, particularly the Muslim Community and I’m pleased that he now has plenty of time to consider his actions.

‘Members of public confronted by Sage were not harmed but shaken by their ordeal and managed to get away from what could have been a very different ending.’

Scotland Yard added: ‘We would appeal to anyone who witnesses or suffers any hate of any type to immediately report it so that action can quickly be taken and catch those responsible.’

Hate crime can be reported through 999 in an emergency, by dialling 101 in a non-emergency, directly at a police station, through the MOPAC Hate Crime app or through community reporting methods such as Tell MAMA, Galop, or the CST.

The suspect outlined to undercover agents how he wanted to use explosives to target crowds at the pier between 18 and 25 December because "Christmas was the perfect day to commit the attack".

Jameson professed not to need an escape plan as he was "ready to die", according to the document.

The suspect's home in Modesto, California, was raided by FBI agents on Wednesday, where they allegedly found his last will and testament along with several weapons and ammunition.

Jameson was charged in the Eastern District Court of California with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation and faces as many as 20 years in prison if convicted.

His lawyer denied the allegations and did not enter a plea at a court hearing on Friday afternoon.

Jameson attended basic training with the Marine Corps in 2009 and graduated with a "sharpshooter" rifle qualification, according to the FBI, but was later discharged after failing to disclose a history of asthma.

According to McKinney, Jameson selected Pier 39 because "he had been there before and knew it was a heavily crowded area".

"Jameson explained that he also desired to use explosives and described a plan in which explosives could 'tunnel' or 'funnel' people into a location where Jameson could inflict casualties," McKinney stated.

The suspect inadvertently revealed his plans to an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a senior leader of the IS, according to the court document.

Jameson allegedly said the US needed "another attack like New York or San Bernardino", adding that he also wanted to use vehicles and firearms to carry it out.

"The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is real - and it is serious - but the American people can be assured that the Department of Justice remains vigilant in protecting our homeland," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

According to the criminal complaint, Jameson "has espoused radical jihadi beliefs, including authoring social media posts that are supportive of terrorism".

He was active on Facebook, "liking" pro-IS posts, said the FBI.

He "loved" a post on 29 November of a propaganda image of Santa Claus standing in New York with a box of dynamite.

"He was under surveillance by law enforcement, and the public was never in imminent danger," the FBI said in a statement.

Colorado shooting suspect was an Iraq War vet who posted alt-right ‘Pepe’ memes on social media

Brad Reed | 01 Jan 2018 at 14:13 ET

IMG at link

Matthew Riehl, the man accused of killing a suburban Denver sheriff’s deputy and wounding four others, is a veteran of the Iraq War who is also fond of posting alt-right memes on his Facebook account.

Forbes writer J.J. MacNab discovered Riehl’s Facebook page, in which he identifies himself as “Matt Gonzo,” and where he has posted multiple memes featuring Pepe the Frog, the cartoon that has been appropriated as a symbol for white nationalists.

Other of Riehl’s Facebook posts include calling former President Barack Obama a “lying piece of sh*t” and shared posts from alt-right website Breitbart News.

As the Associated Press has reported, Riehl seemed to have a grudge against local police officers, and posted multiple complaints about the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department on YouTube.

Specifically, the AP notes that Riehl in a December video called for “the firing of Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock” and attacked him “in highly personal terms.” Riehl also said that during that video that he would be running as a “libertarian” candidate for Douglas County Sheriff.

Chat logs made available to ProPublica show talk of mass killings and the recipes that could be used to carry them out.

by A.C. Thompson and Ali Winston - Nov. 2, 2017

Right-wing extremists communicating in confidential online chats in recent months have shared scores of documents detailing the manufacture and use of bombs, grenades, mines and other incendiary devices.

The documents, which range from instructions on detonating dynamite to U.S. military manuals for constructing improvised explosives and booby traps, were passed around during online conversations among members of Anticom, a secretive and militant group that has emerged during the past year.

Records of the online chats were made available to ProPublica by Unicorn Riot, a leftist media collective that has reported critically on racist marches and right-wing political rallies in cities around the U.S.

Anticom, or Anti-Communist Action, views itself as a guerilla army fighting against what it has called the radical elements of the country’s political left. On its social media channels, Anticom openly embraces fascist ideology and imagery, and the group’s members have engaged in hate-filled talk involving Jews, Muslims, immigrants and African Americans. In recent weeks Anticom has stepped out of the shadows as its members have provided security to so-called alt-right champion Richard Spencer at a speaking event in Florida. Anticom also helped to organize a “White Lives Matter” protest in Shelbyville, Tennessee, last weekend.

It is unclear how seriously the documents shared in the chats were explored by any of Anticom’s members or followers, much less whether the documents were actually used to craft incendiary devices. But the transcripts of the chats include racist talk and open mentions of mass killings.

The user who posted the bomb-making documents, for instance, said he or she wanted to overthrow the U.S. government. “Death to all non whites,” the user wrote in a chat forum post on April 26. Another Anticom member encouraged recruits to construct a bomb and use it to carry out an attack in the style of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

The chatroom logs shared with ProPublica show that Anticom members were in communication with another extremist group, several members of which have surfaced in federal investigations.

In May, federal agents searching the Tampa home of 21-year-old Brandon Russell discovered an array of explosives and bomb ingredients: fuses made from rifle shells, a white cake-like explosive substance called HMTD, more than one pound of ammonium nitrate and other explosive precursors, and two different kinds of radioactive material. The agents promptly arrested Russell, who was both a member of the Florida National Guard and a leader of Atomwaffen, a small fascist group calling for a “white revolution in the 21st century.”

Federal authorities only uncovered Russell's bomb-making materials after his roommate and fellow Atomwaffen member Devon Arthurs killed two of their comrades. Arthurs later told law enforcement that he acted in order to prevent acts of domestic terrorism, and that Atomwaffen intended “to build a FourthReich.” Russell participated in “neo-Nazi internet chat rooms where he threatened to kill people and bomb infrastructure,” and was plotting to blow up a nuclear power plant near Miami, according to Arthurs.

After pleading guilty in September to illegally possessing explosive material and an unregistered destructive device, Russell is currently awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for early next year.

Russell’s attorney, Ian Goldstein, cast doubt on any link between Anticom and his client’s explosives charges. Law enforcement didn’t find any manuals for building bombs in Russell’s home or on his computer, Goldstein said, adding Anticom and its online chats never came up during his research for the case.

Federal prosecutors in Florida would not comment on the case, or any potential overlap between Anticom and Russell and his neo-Nazi cell.

ProPublica asked the FBI whether it was looking into Anticom and the bomb plans. “The FBI does not confirm or deny specific investigations. However, any information regarding violent criminal activity or threats of terrorism should be reported promptly to the FBI,” said a national FBI spokesperson.

Speaking broadly, the FBI representative noted that the bureau concerns itself with potential acts of terrorism, not unpopular political beliefs. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and other criminal acts. Furthermore, the FBI does not and will not police ideology.”

Anticom, through a designated spokesperson, did not dispute the authenticity of the logs, but said the group had months ago taken steps to ban people threatening violence from the online chats.

“Of course we denounce that kind of behavior,” the person said. “If an Anticom member built a bomb, he'd be banned as soon as we found out.” Despite the intensely hateful views expressed by many Anticom members, the spokesperson said “all races and ideologies are welcome” in the organization so long as they “are anti-communist.”

The person dismissed any suggestion that Anticom had a connection with Atomwaffen.

Anticom’s size is unknown, but it boasts chapters in at least 15 U.S. and Canadian cities, and members have shown up waving the black-and-yellow Anticom flag at events across the country. (One of the organization’s logos shows a person being hurled from a helicopter, a tactic used by right-wing death squads in Chile and Argentina.) Anticom’s confidential online chats, which were conducted on an encrypted server hosted by service called Discord, give some sense of the organization’s possible scale: people using more than 1,200 different usernames participated in the discussions.

Peter Simi, director of the Earl Babbie Research Center at Chapman University, noted that violent and radical talk are part of the culture of white extremist groups — and that talk typically does not lead to action. Still, he said the material was worrisome.

“All it takes is one person to do something with that information,” said Simi, who has interviewed dozens of white supremacists and co-authored the book “American Swastika.”

Over the span of about seven months this year — from early February to late September — Anticom members posted more than 90,000 messages on the Discord server before being kicked off the service by company officials. The online discussions include plenty of profanity-laden racist and anti-Semitic banter by people with usernames like “Augusto Pinochet,” “deplorablepatriot,” and “Haupstürmfuhrer Pepe.” More worrisome, though, are the incitements towards violence.

On April 26, one Anticom member posed a question to the rest of the group: “Anyone want access to my pdf library?” the person wrote. “137 pdfs of how to manufacture explosives.”

Saved in the PDF format, the cache of documents includes recipes for making potent bombs from ammonium nitrate, scientific papers on the chemical composition of different explosive agents, an Army manual on deploying anti-personnel mines, and a guide to using radio frequencies to detonate explosives, a tactic frequently used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the bomb documents are highly technical, likely to be of little use to anyone but a skilled chemist or engineer. Other documents are old, like a 1984 book showing how to build hand grenades. As a whole, however, the documents could easily provide a person with the tools to kill and wound scores of people.

J.M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in the Netherlands, said social media companies like Discord tend to downplay the dangers posed by racial extremists using their networks and are often slow to curb their activities. “White supremacists and antigovernment extremists have always collected and distributed this kind of content. The internet makes that process easier and cheaper and more anonymous.”

Berger said Discord should consider contacting law enforcement, if only out of a sense of caution. “It’s probably not appropriate to freak out,” Berger said, “but a situation like this merits more scrutiny.”

A spokesperson for Discord, which is primarily used by video game enthusiasts who want to communicate by voice or text, while playing games, said the Anticom chats were shut down in September once Discord was “alerted to activity in violation of our terms of service.” The company barred other white extremist groups off its servers in the aftermath of the lethal Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August. According to the spokesperson, Discord had not been in contact with any authorities, but would cooperate in any investigation should one be undertaken.

One Army manual shared by Anticom members offers step-by-step plans for creating fire bombs by adding chemicals to gasoline or other readily available fuels. But the documents go well beyond explosives. There are instructions on using military-type assault rifles and M249 machine guns, as well as hand-to-hand fighting techniques.

The chat logs also describe plans for engaging in violence at political events during the past year. In the days before an April 15 rally in support of President Donald Trump in Berkeley, California, one Anticom member promised the event would turn into a “bloodbath.” After the rally, which was marked by a series of brutal street battles between right-wingers and leftists, another Anticom member boasted of breaking a rival’s jaw in the fighting.

New Mexico School Shooter Had Secret Life on Pro-Trump White-Supremacy Sites

For years before William Edward Atchison killed two students and himself, he lived a shadow life online—one full of crude alt-right memes and praise for school shooters.

In real life, William Edward Atchison—people called him Bill—lived in a little yellow house with his parents, about a mile away from the Giant gas station where he worked and from Aztec High School, where he shot and killed two students and then himself last Thursday.

At the murder scene, police found a thumb drive with a note that read, “If things go according to plan, today would be when I die. I go somewhere and gear up, then hold a class hostage and go apeshit, then blow my brains out.”

He wrote “work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out of this ****.”

“It’s a shame he wasn’t on our radar,” San Juan County Sheriff Ken Christesen told Fox News last week. “I don’t think he had anything so much as a traffic ticket.”

And yet online, the 21-year-old New Mexico resident lived a prolific life as a white supremacist, pro-Trump meme peddler who was most known for his obsession with school shooters. For a half-decade, Atchison spent most of his days online, repeatedly posting threats of violence and cries for help.

When users saw posts from Atchison, who went by dozens of names like “Adam Lanza” and “Future Mass Shooter” on both larger platforms like YouTube and racist communities like The Daily Stormer, they would often ask how his manifesto was going.

Despite local law enforcement’s claims that he wasn’t a known threat, and a visit from the FBI in 2016, Atchison spent most of the last half-decade glorifying school shooters on alt-right websites and posting plaintive appeals for help in fixing his life, according to hundreds of posts analyzed by The Daily Beast.

At EncyclopediaDramatica, a Wikipedia-style site for fringe internet users to describe memes and in-jokes in detail, he volunteered as a SysOp, the site’s word for an administrator. Atchison’s page, now replete with his screen name @satanicdruggie and his real identity, is filed under the “An Heroes” section, reserved for people who have killed themselves.

On the alt-right forums and hate groups he frequented, Atchison appears to have made many enemies. Despite later becoming a moderator of the site, one of Atchison’s most popular EncyclopediaDramatica accounts, AlGore, was banned from the site for two years when it was labeled as a “troll.”

Ryan Lenz, who monitors hate groups and extremism for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Atchison’s pattern is typical of white extremists—even if his years-long archive of school-shooting proclamations might be unprecedented.

“Generally, mass shooters spend a period of time prior to their action steeped in studying previous shooters. They study the aftermath of these individuals. They have a great deal of esteem or respect for others who have done the same,” said Lenz.

“Add in the ideology, in this case these forums—it compounds the severity and the rate of radicalization.”

Lenz said the cocktail of violent rhetoric, mental illness, and economic despair is what leads to “mobilization,” the word experts use for the shift from radicalized online rhetoric to real-life behavior.

Acting on a tip that Atchison had posted a comment on a gaming forum asking users where he could get “a cheap assault rifle” for a mass shooting, the FBI interviewed him and his family, and ultimately determined that no crime had been committed and closed the investigation.

“He was cooperative,” Albuquerque FBI Special Agent Terry Wade said at a press conference last week. “He told us that he enjoyed trolling on the internet.

Two years before the FBI visited his home, and three years before he killed two people in a New Mexico high school, Atchison pleaded for advice on how to fix his life.

“Look, I’m sorry if I’m rude and hateful or anything, but I don’t know what to do. I’ve lived no life for nearly 19 years, most of which was in the miserable ass sun-belt. Did you know new mexico has the fourth highest suicide rate?” Atchison wrote.

“Should I escape this dump or deal with it? How can I become polite and make some friends out there in this world?”

Independence march in Poland draws thousands of people some “praying for Islamic holocaust”

13th November 2017

Tens of thousands of right-wing protesters dominated Poland’s Independence Day celebrations with Islamophobic placards calling for a holocaust against Muslims.

An estimated 60,000 people attended the march in the capital city of Warsaw, with protesters chanting “clean blood”, “pure Poland” and “white Poland”.

President Andrzej Duda presided over state ceremonies, as well as the European Union’s president Donald Tusk, who is a former prime minister of Poland.

The right-wing march was the largest Independence Day event in recent years, overshadowing official state observances and other patriotic events.

Some participants expressed clear Islamophobic and white supremacist ideas, with some banners reading “White Europe of brotherly nations” and “Pray for Islamic holocaust”.
Participants marched under the slogan “We Want God,” words from an old Polish religious song that President Donald Trump quoted during a visit to Warsaw earlier this year.
Speakers spoke of standing against Islam and defending Christian values.

Police estimated that out of the 60,000 people who took part, most were young white men and elderly Poles.

The march has become one of Europe largest demonstrations, and Saturday drew far-right leaders from across Europe, including Britain’s Tommy Robinson and Roberto Fiore from Italy.

State broadcaster TVP, which reflects the conservative government’s policies, called it a “great march of patriots,” and in its broadcasts described the event as one that drew mostly regular Poles expressing their love of Poland – not extremists. [defending their extremist publid]

Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said: “It was a beautiful sight. We are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday.”

Independence Day marks Poland regaining its sovereignty at the end of World War I after being partitioned and ruled since the late eighteenth century by Russia, Prussia and the Hapsburg Empire.

This week, thousands of Polish nationalists and far-right supporters took to the streets of Warsaw, some of them holding anti-Muslim signs, including one that read “pray for Islamic holocaust”. Aired across the globe, the shocking scenes left many wondering if Poland has forgotten its considerable Muslim heritage.

1. Muslims Have Been In Poland For Seven Centuries

Muslim Tatars first came to Poland from the Crimea in the 14th century, when they were invited to help the Polish-Lithuanian alliance fight the Christian Knights of the Teutonic Order. They famously joined the alliance at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and saved both nations. As a reward, they were invited to stay and were given land around the borderlands of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, where many families have resided ever since, making them one of Europe’s oldest Muslim communities.

2. Poland Is Home To Europe’s Most Indigenous Mosques

The historic mosques of Poland are found in two towns close to the northeastern border. The 18th-century Bohoniki Mosque and the 19th-century Kruszyniany mosque are often mistaken for local churches. Their square, wooden buildings and pitched roofs, where onion-domed turrets point skyward, are reminiscent of local, rural orthodox churches. The only clue that these are Muslim places of worship are the crescents on the top. Five more of these very European-looking mosques survive in Lithuania and Belarus.

3. Muslims Have Fought For Poland For Over 600 Years

Ever since the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, Polish Muslims have fought in every major war for Poland. This included going up against the Ottomans at the 1683 Battle of Vienna, led by Polish King John III Sobieski; the Napoleonic Wars; and the Second World War, in which a Polish Tatar Regiment fought against the German Nazis. To acknowledge their brave and loyal contribution, a statue of a mounted Tatar soldier was unveiled at Orunia Park in Gdansk in 2010.

4. Poland’s Military Had Imams

Polish-Muslim soldiers were so highly regarded that the Polish Army installed its very own imams at the start of the 20th century. The imams took Islamised oaths from new Muslim recruits and led soldiers in daily prayers. They oversaw funerals, marriages and nightly prayers during the month of Ramadan, when Polish-Muslim soldiers were allowed to fast. The last of these Imams, Ali Ismail Woronowicz, was posthumously awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2011 after being killed by the Soviet Union in 1941.

5. Poland Has Always Supported Its Muslim Communities

Throughout the nation’s history, Polish nobles and leaders have supported the Polish-Muslim community even after periods of discontent. This began in the 14th century, when they were first granted nobility. After the Tatar Mutiny of the 17th century, when many switched allegiance because their religious and cultural rights had been denied, King John III Sobieski asked them to return and promised to reinstate them. During the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy, which upset many Polish-Muslims, the country’s Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz came out and said that he shared “the feelings of those who may feel offended”. The PM then reminded his nation that “Poland was and still remains a country of tolerance. This fact is confirmed by the 600-year presence of the Muslim Tatar community in the territory of the Republic of Poland.”https://www.mysalaam.com/en/story/fi...15112017080852

The 19-year-old accused of killing nearly 20 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday belonged to a white supremacist militia, the group's leader claimed Friday.

The leader of the Republic of Florida white supremacist militia claimed in interviews with the Anti-Defamation League and The Associated Press that accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz belonged to the group and trained with other members in paramilitary drills.

However, Florida law enforcement sources reportedly told the Tallahassee Democrat on Thursday that they had not confirmed a link between Cruz and the Republic of Florida group.

Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday.

The group describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics," according to the ADL. Militia leader Jordan Jereb told the AP that the group wants to create a "white ethno-state" in Florida.
Several people claiming to be members of the militia posted on section of the 4chan forum popular with white supremacists, saying that Cruz was part of the group.

Jereb told the ADL that group had not instructed or wanted Cruz to conduct a school shooting. Wednesday’s shooting, the 18th school shooting so far this year, left at least 17 dead and 14 injured.

“He acted on his own behalf of what he just did and he’s solely responsible for what he just did," Jereb told the AP, adding that he thought Cruz had recently had "trouble with a girl," seeming to imply that the attack could have been timed to coincide with Valentine's Day.

Cruz, who was arrested off of school property, was identified as a former student of the school who had been expelled after bringing ammunition to school in his backpack. He reportedly legally purchased the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting one year ago.

President Trump said in a tweet Thursday morning that mental illness was responsible for the shooting and that community members could have prevented it by reporting Cruz's erratic behavior to authorities.

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior," he tweeted.

"Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”

The number of hate groups has grown by 20 percent since 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a new report.

The number of hate groups operating in the United States grew by four percent in 2017, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based monitoring group.

The SPLC identified 954 hate groups in the US last year, an increase from the 917 it had documented in 2016, the group said in a report released on Wednesday.

The number of hate groups has risen 20 percent since 2014, the civil rights monitor noted in a conference call with members of the press.

According to the SPLC, 2017 was the third straight year to witness a rise in the number of hate groups. It was also the first year since 2009 that hate groups were documented in all 50 states.'Racism sanctioned by highest office'

Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, laid much of the blame for last year's increase on the administration of President Donald Trump, saying he has stoked the flames of white supremacy and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

"President Trump in 2017 reflected what white supremacist groups want to see: a country where racism is sanctioned by the highest office, immigrants are given the boot and Muslims banned," she said.

Neo-Nazi groups, which the year before had numbered 99, saw the largest increase, growing by 22 percent and reaching 121 groups across the country.

Neo-Nazi groups were among the more than 600 organisations the SPLC designated as a broader category, which also includes Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapters, neo-Confederate groups and others.

Anti-government groups grew from 623 in 2016 to 689 last year, the group explained, adding that 237 of those groups were armed militias.

Anti-Muslim groups rose for the third year in a row.

There were also 233 chapters of black nationalist hate groups, such as the Nation of Islam, in 2017, as compared to 193 the previous year.

Beirich described black nationalist hate organisations, which grew by 22 percent last year, as "broadly anti-Semitic, anti-white and usually anti-LGBT".

"The growth we've seen in this sector is a response to rising white supremacy, which isn't surprising given the environment we're in," she said in a conference call with members of the press on Wednesday.

"I also want to say that these kinds of organisations have nothing in common with groups like Black Lives Matter and others who are fighting for civil rights, for minorities and for everyone - and that's a distinction that should be kept in mind."

Beirich attributed the decrease in KKK chapters to the growing appeal of the alt-right, a loosely knit coalition of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis who advocate a white ethnostate.

Last month, the Anti-Defamation League published a report that found 18 people were killed by white supremacists in 2017.

"Domestic terrorism committed by white supremacists … continues to be a problem," Beirich said, alluding to a string of far-right attacksthat resulted in deaths last year.

In May 2017, 35-year-old Jeremy Christian was arrested and charged with stabbing to death two people and injuring a third when they attempted to prevent him from hurling Islamophobic insults at Muslim passengers.

In August, white supremacists from across the country descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for "Unite the Right", the largest rally of its kind in years.

One of the participants, James Alex Fields, allegedly ploughed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring several others.

"It's as if our culture has been infused by these ideas," Beirich said.

The SPLC's new report also included 51 anti-LGBT groups and two male supremacist organisations, a new category that was not included in the monitor's previous reports.

The male supremacist movement "misrepresents all women as genetically inferior, manipulative and stupid and reduces them to their reproductive or sexual function", the SPLC said in its report.

Beirich said these groups made it "glaringly apparent that it would be weird for us to leave them off of the list, given that they're doing the exact same as these other organisations are doing to other populations".

One group they failed to mention opposite of 'male supremacist movement' is the 'feminism supremacist movement' that wants to kill of majority of the male population and save a few as sex slaves and labor servants.

“Thor: Ragnarok” is a hammer in the face to the alt-rightThe makers of the third “Thor” went out of their way to protect Norse mythos from the grip of white supremacy

by John Semley - 11.04.2017

It feels absurd to have to say this, but times are strange, the intermingling of politics and pop culture even stranger, and one, it seems, can never be too careful. So, here goes: I truly, deeply hope that “Thor: Ragnarok” does not embolden modern white nationalists.

The latest in Marvel’s slate of Thor superhero fantasies — which is either the third or sixth entry, if “Avengers” movies count as “Thor” movies — is already garnering wild praise for its inventiveness, colorful explosiveness and sheer fun. Less “Captain America: The Winter Solider” and more “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Against the relative doom-and-gloom of 2013’s “Thor: The Dark World,” “Ragnarok” seems to embrace the inherent silliness of muscly Norse gods in complicated helmets smashing into each other, in their recurring bids to either execute or prevent the execution of one or another world-ending scheme. In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is itself an apocalyptic calamity, an enormous battle between gods, which sees the world submerged in water, to later resurface and be repopulated by human survivors. This makes it a consummate comic book, and comic book movie, event — a “Crisis”-style opportunity to simplify or reboot complicated canon continuity.

In the contemporary moment, anything even vaguely Nordic-related also carries a weird, sinister charge. The revitalization of white supremacist movements in the West (under the guise of “white nationalism” or “White Lives Matter” or the “alt-right” or other euphemistically named movements) often proceeds from a white, European, Christian identity. Sure, they often seem to play it pretty fast and loose with the “Christian” stuff. And not just because the teachings of the actual New Testament tend to come down quite harshly on points like hating your fellow man. But because contemporary white supremacy is ideologically and aesthetically informed by the same sort of Euro-pagan, pseudo-heathen mythologies exploited by stuff like the “Thor” movies.

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In 2015, three men in Virginia were arrested and charged for attempting to bomb black churches and Jewish synagogues, as part of a plan to initiate a race war. Beyond their whiteness, and their radical hatefulness, the culprits shared a belief in Odinism, a (sort of) old world European belief system. No burning crosses or biblical, fire-and-brimstone barking for these racists. They pledged themselves not to Christ, or to the traditional notion of God, but to Odin, an ancient Norse god.

In the “Thor” films, Odin is played by Anthony Hopkins and depicted as Thor’s dad and the ruler of the magical realm of Asgard. On the premium cable fantasy series, a version of Odin, called “Mr. Wednesday,” folklore is played by Ian McShane (Wednesday itself derives from the Old English wōdnesdæg, in reference to Odin, or Wōtan, as he’s called in Germanic), and depicted as a wandering, omnipotent huckster. In Norse mythology, Odin is a key figure — if not the key figure, inspiring myths, poems, operas, the carvings of ancient archaeological runes and, indeed, even his own belief system.

Despite its ties to ancient Germanic deities, Odinism is a form of Heathenry, and classified as a “new religious movement,” a term used to apply broadly to various pagan, occult or otherwise “alternative” religious groups and denominations, which range from Satanism to Christian Science to the Hare Krishna movement. While not all modern practitioners of Heathenry are racists or white supremacists, those who follow Odinism hew to a more folkish, or racialist, belief system: one that valorizes Odin as a god of Germanic-descended peoples and so privileges anyone of Northern European descent. More extreme Odinists explicitly believe that theirs is the true religion of the Aryan people, with even Christianity being mongrelized. Some incorporate the Nazi swastika — a rather obviously racist and white supremacist symbol — into more traditional Norse mythological iconography, like Thor’s Hammer (indeed: the Anti-Defamation League classifies Thor’s hammer as a “general hate symbol”).

“Odinism is undergoing a renaissance,” Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, told Public Radio International earlier this year. “Now is a great time for Odinism because it fits into this historical narrative about European cultural greatness and a connection between whiteness and nationality.” International street thug hate organizations like the Soldiers of Odin explicitly borrow ideas and iconography from Norse myth. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who took 77 lives in 2011, also self-identifies as an Odinist. And the cultural influence extends beyond the Marvel movies, from the benign (the appearance of the Norse god Loki as a green-faced, zoot-suited monster in the Jim Carrey comedy “The Mask”) to the more patently “problematic” (the neo-völkisch, racialist ideology undermining certain strains of black metal music).

The Southern Poverty Law Center has also noted the trend, with a lengthy missive from earlier this year describing the renewed appeal in ancient European gods: “For many white supremacists, Norse mythology features folklore of revenge and battles between forces of good and evil which resonate with white supremacist views of today’s society.” Forget trumped-up talk of a new Crusade between the Christian and Islamic world. Odinism harkens back even further, to an imagined mythology believed to predate Christianity (which hardcore white supremacists reject on the basis that Christ surrendered to Jewish influence). One could (perhaps reasonably) argue that worshiping a one-eyed Germanic warrior-deity is no more or less reasonable than worshiping any other fictional prophet or Messiah figure, or some omniscient beardo in the sky. In pretty much every case, perfectly good gods are marshaled to nasty, malevolent ends. But in the context of contemporary white supremacism, this neopagan spiritual basis proves particularly baffling.

One of the things that marks the modern “alt-right” — beyond its oft-cited use of memes, jokes, irony, etc. — is the way it justifies its galling racism by deferring to the regimes of science and reason. Instead of identifying as “racist,” they practice “race realism,” which attempts to use science (in the form of IQ charts or speciously sourced and decontextualized crime statistics) to justify racist ideology. Jared Taylor, founder and editor of the white supremacist magazine the “American Renaissance,” who stumped for Donald Trump because he believed “the effects of his policy would be to reduce the dispossession of Whites,” is a prominent American “race realist.”

Such beliefs, however phony, are central to the presumed seriousness of contemporary, suit-and-tie white supremacy. This is a movement, after all, that desperately attempts to distinguish itself, both ideologically and aesthetically, from cliches of drooling, thick-necked, burning-cross-style KKK racism. The neopagan influence in modern white supremacy drastically undermines even this ersatz seriousness, revealing the utter incomprehensibility of the "alt-right" and associated ideological movements. It becomes difficult to square even the bad science of the buttoned-down race realists with berserker death cult beliefs in a final showdown between Odinist Aryans and the other races of the world — their own racialist Ragnarök.

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I reserve no particular affection for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s to the credit of “Thor: Ragnarok” that it explicitly pushes back against the racialized, white supremacist co-opting of Norse-gods-cum-comic-book-heroes. The film’s titular winner-take-all melee casts Odin (Hopkins), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and even the mischievous Loki (Tom Hiddleston) against Cate Blanchett’s scowling Hela, a goddess of death and Odin’s first born daughter, bent on expanding the colonialist Asgard empire.

In her wanton, giddy lust for violence, Hela challenges taken-for-granted notions of Asgardian exceptionalism, implicating Odin et. al in the nasty business of extra-dimensional empire building. Indeed, Hela’s plot is nothing short of spreading the Asgardian master race across the cosmos, exterminating “lesser” classes of life that stand in her way. The parallels to the similarly deluded endpoint of "alt-right" and modern white nationalists — who talk openly and with insane, straight-faced pride of an all-white ethnostate while judiciously avoiding the subject of the mass genocides required to create one — is pretty much self-evident.

It is perhaps too much to ask that (re)casting burly Norse/Germanic/Aryan icons like Thor as protectors of the downtrodden will prove enough to turn back the nasty cultural appropriation of Norse mythology. Still, “Ragnarok,” in all its kaleidoscopic, candy-flipping colors and arch silliness and stupidity, underscores the sheer preposterousness of using such figures to justify something as stupid, preposterous and wildly immoral as the modern white nationalist agenda.

Maybe it’s enough that in an age when the "alt-right" and radical white supremacist fringes co-opt all manner of various pop cultural signifiers, from “The Matrix” to Depeche Mode to Pepe The Frog, Hollywood went and made something that is defiantly not for them. At least in the trenches of the ongoing, increasingly ludicrous culture wars, the forces of progressivism have the God of Thunder on their side.

Notice all these white racists using Odin, a one-eye Norse god, as their God. When ad-Dajjal (anti-Christ) appears, he too will be blind in one eye. All of these white racists will follow the Dajjal, taking him as Odin.